


people like us (know how to survive)

by Timballisto



Series: clarke and lexa vs the world [19]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, Alternate Universe - Mr. & Mrs. Smith Fusion, Angst and Fluff and Smut, F/F, Mr and Mrs Smith AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-18
Updated: 2015-04-05
Packaged: 2018-03-18 10:57:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3567134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Timballisto/pseuds/Timballisto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>She loads the gun with finality, the click of the gun’s safety like a death knell to her ears. Clarke Griffin is going to kill her wife. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>  <em>And she wonders how it came to this.</em></p><p> </p><p>Or, the Mr(s) and Mrs Smith AU you’ve always wanted</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Clarke goes back to the house. She can tell herself there’s more equipment, more guns, more ammo she needs there, but Clarke knows a lie when she hears one. Maybe it’s just poetic, to end her five-year lie with Lexa in the house that witnessed it all.

She pulls up to the house first, sprinting through the garage and up the stairs. At the back of her closet behind her formal dresses (she ignores the white garment bag that holds her wedding dress) is a loose panel. She pries it away, digging inside for the pistol she kept in case of emergencies. She loads the gun with finality, the click of the gun’s safety like a death knell to her ears.

Clarke Griffin is going to kill her wife.

And she wonders how it came to this.

* * *

_Lexa tastes like tequila._

_She tells Lexa as much, murmuring against the warm skin under her ear and slipping her hands beneath the sheets. The hotel room is quiet, the dim light of the morning filtering through the curtains. It is not the worst thing in the world to wake up after a successful mission with a beautiful woman in your bed, and salt on your tongue._

_Not quite strangers. She’d learned Lexa’s name when she panted it into her ear. It was a late introduction followed by nails digging into Clarke’s skin and heels digging into Clarke’s back._

_“I think you’re still drunk.” Lexa said flatly, but Clarke could see the amusement in her eyes and in the wry pull at the edges of her mouth. How strange, that she could so easily read a stranger, even one she’d spent the night with._

_It’s electrifying._

_“Maybe.” Clarke shrugged, grinning at the way Lexa’s eyes almost unconsciously dropped to her breasts. “It’s not the worst thing to be, at 10 in the morning.”_

_“You will be singing a different tune in a few hours, I assure you.” Lexa said, the clipped syllables of her accent softening a little._

_“Planning on sticking around?” Clarke asked, before she could stop herself. There was just something about Lexa that made her want to keep reaching out despite her better judgment._

_Lexa looked at her carefully. “What did you have in mind?” she asked. Clarke smiled._

_“Well,” She drawled, slipping a leg over Lexa’s hip and settling her weight across Lexa’s thighs. “I was thinking…” She ducked her head low to press her lips against the skin of Lexa’s clavicle, scraping her teeth across the marks she’d left the night before._

_“Yes?” Lexa held the last syllable between her lips, hissing with pleasure at Clarke’s mouth. Her fingers dug into the curve of Clarke’s waist, digging in with every swipe of Clarke’s tongue._

_“I was thinking of breakfast in bed.” Clarke mumbled against her skin, just loud enough for Lexa to hear. “And then maybe some food, later.”_

_Lexa laughed, the vibrations humming through her chest and buzzing against Clarke’s lips. “That was truly terrible, Clarke.”_

_Lexa laughed, and Clarke was a goner._

* * *

Lexa slips into the house through an unlocked window on the first floor. She can hear quiet footsteps on above her head, and the click of sure hands loading a gun.

She isn’t one for guns herself, preferring the far more untraceable method of knives and a quick snap of the neck. It fits, that Clarke would favor the brutal efficiency of a firearm. Lexa had respected that same efficiency, once upon a time. She’d liked the way that Clarke would get things done, the sheer force of her will enough to get others to follow her lead. It was endearing, when Clarke would go toe to toe with someone to get what she wanted. Even if it was something as stupid as getting off on a parking ticket from running a meter to zero.

It’s strange, how easy it is for Lexa to imagine Clarke with a gun in her hands.

Clarke makes the first move, coming out from cover guns blazing. Lexa barely managed to dive into the living room before bullets lodged into the wooden paneled floors. Lexa allows herself a moment of irritation; it’d taken two weeks to lay the floor down in the entry hall by hand and Clarke knew it. And now it had stupid fucking bullet holes in it.

It’s a game of cat and mouse through the rooms of their house, the both of them tearing through it like hurricanes. Clarke has Lexa outgunned, but that doesn't mean anything in their house full of blind corners. Still, Lexa has to throw herself to the ground to avoid spray from a semi-automatic when Clarke listens for her steps through the walls.

“You need to work on your aim, Clarke.” Lexa calls, half goading, half buying herself time as she slipped around the kitchen island. She slips her hand into the back of the cupboards, feeling for the shock bang grenade she’d stowed behind the crockpot they never used.

“I’ll get right on that!” Clarke yelled back, an edge in her voice and Lexa worries that Clarke is wounded for a brief second. Lexa grits her teeth and crushes those niggling thoughts, and focuses instead on victory. Clarke isn’t her wife anymore, she’s the enemy—it was habit, that was all, one she needed to break quickly if she wanted to survive. Just because she thought it was real doesn’t mean Clarke ever felt the same.

She throws the grenade.

* * *

_The sex was phenomenal._

_Before Clarke, Lexa preferred solitude and the quiet satisfaction of doing her job interspersed with a few indiscretions in far flung cities. The longest she had ever been with a single person before Clarke had been Costia, and a hazy summer in the Congo on loan to a warlord. And hadn’t that ended well?_

_But Clarke was different. Clarke had a singular intensity in bed, an attention to detail that would leave Lexa wrung out and exhausted for hours just trying to keep up. And while she was no stranger to desperate sex, Clarke stood out. She was intoxicating, somehow drawing Lexa in deeper and deeper until, after a mere two weeks, Lexa found herself agreeing to visit Washington D.C ._

_And then another trip._

_And then a year anniversary._  

_And then a marriage proposal._

_“It’s a good cover.” Indra had grunted when she’d mentioned it. “It’d be less of a drain on Coalition resources. If she becomes a problem, kill her.”_

_And that’s all the stoic killer had said on the subject._

_Octavia was more concerned._

_“Marriage?” she asked incredulously, dragging her noise canceling headphones off of her head and around her neck. The gun range buzzer blared, signaling a ten minute ceasefire. “Are you fucking with me right now?”_

_“No.” Lexa said, succinctly. She placed her gun down as well, unloading it and setting her unused box of ammo aside._

  _“I thought you said never again, after Costia?” Octavia pressed. “Didn’t you say some stupid shit like ‘love is weakness’ to all the new recruits? I remember it, you said it fucking often enough.”_

  _“Clarke isn’t part of a mission. She isn’t a distraction from an objective, or an asset.” Lexa said, a muscle working in her jaw. “She’s a doctor who works long hours and presents at medical conferences all over the country-”_

  _“So she’s boring.”_

  _“She’s safe.” Lexa stressed. “You cannot tell me that, given the ability to choose, you would not choose safe every time.”_

  _Octavia swallowed her retort, her eye catching the tall, broad form of Lincoln as he grabbed another magazine. She had the brief image of him lying on the floor in some godforsaken warzone, bleeding out._

  _“Yeah.” she muttered. “I get it.”_

 " _Good.” Lexa said. “Because your aim needs some work, recruit.”_

* * *

Clarke sees the grenade barely in time for her to get a hand up; she’s dazed, but not blinded, which is the only thing that keeps her from dying with a slit throat. Her guns drop to a clatter on the dining room floor.

They’re brutal with each other. Lexa smashes Clarke’s face against the wall, breaking her nose and smearing bright blood against the crème of the wallpaper, and Clarke retaliates by slamming her fist into Lexa’s jaw so hard it knocks her sprawling onto the dining table.

The tablecloth skews, sending decorative place setting smashing to the floor along with shitty cutlery Lexa had hated anyway. It’s enough of a distraction to allow Lexa to get back her bearings just in time to see Clarke lunging at her with a steak knife.

Lexa catches Clarke around the gut with a kick that sends her head cracking into a bookshelf. She barely manages to duck out of the way before Lexa puts her foot through the drywall where Clarke’s head had been.

Clarke’s heart sinks. Lexa is better than her. Better trained, stronger, faster— and more mentally prepared. Lexa’s face is set, the stoic mask Clarke had only ever seen directed at people who’d earned her wife’s anger, never at _her_.

Lexa takes her mind off the betrayal by fracturing one of Clarke's ribs and sending her staggering backwards. Her legs slip on the carpeting and she goes crashing to the floor, almost on top of her discarded pistol. It digs into her injured side, causing hazy dots to spin across her vision, but there’s sick triumph when she closes her fingers around the grip, and pushes herself to her feet.

Clarke whips around, pistol extended, only to find herself face to face with Lexa, holding her discarded semi-automatic and breathing hard.

“Well?” Clarke demanded. “Aren’t you going to finish it?”

“Are you?” Lexa asked, quietly. Accusingly.

“You don’t get to ask me that question.” Clarke said. She cleared her throat, swallowing hard—telltale signs that Clarke was fighting back tears.

If Lexa’s heart wasn’t a shattered, hard, congealing mess, perhaps she could find it within herself to care.

She would kill Clarke, and she would be fine. Love is weakness, love is weakness, _love is weakness_ \- She needs the mantra, because pointing a gun at Clarke is the hardest thing she has ever done.

“I just need to know.” The gun in Clarke’s hand doesn’t tremble (Lexa imagines she was trained too well for that), but there is something of a shiver in her body and her words.

“I just need to—did you ever love me?” Clarke said roughly. “Or was this all just an op to you? Just another—another mission—another mark-“ her voice broke. “I can’t do this. I _can’t_ -“ The pistol Clarke had held outstretched and still dropped to her side, and then fell to the floor from her lax fingers.

“No.” Lexa hissed, stepping forward to fist her hand into the collar of Clarke’s shirt. She pressed the muzzle of the gun into the soft flesh beneath Clarke’s ribs, pushing until she heard a pained grunt whistle from between. “You don’t get to make me the bad guy here. You don’t-“ She shook Clarke. “Pick up the gun, Clarke. _Pick it up_!”

Clarke shook her head. “No.”

“ _Why?_ ” Lexa demanded, her voice breaking. “Why couldn’t you just-“

Clarke steps close and kisses her instead. Despite the blood on her face, the gun under her chin- she leans forward and kisses her wife like it’s the last time.

The guns hits the floor with a thump, and Lexa’s hand curls around the nape of her neck. It’s familiar and foreign and it’d been way too long since they’d had this. Something crunches beneath Lexa’s boot as she pushed forward, deepening the intensity of her mouth against Clarke’s. Clarke makes a sound deep in her throat that Lexa hadn’t heard since the second year of their marriage and it goes straight between her legs.

They pull away from each other with a gasp, their hands fumbling at each other’s clothes. Lexa bats Clarke’s hand away from her shirt buttons, jerking Clarke’s belt out of her slacks hard enough that the belt loops groaned in protest. Her hand brushes against Clarke’s bruised ribs, and instead of shying away, Clarke presses closer.

It makes Lexa feel more alive than she has in months.

She backs Clarke up against the foyer wall, unzipping Clarke’s pants and dragging them down with her as she drops to her knees. The glass from the window digs into her knees, but she’s pressing her nose into the curls above Clarke’s clit, hitching a long leg over her shoulder and she _doesn’t care_.

It’s a heady feeling, and she can honestly say she’s felt nothing like it.

* * *

“I did not set out to seduce and marry you.” Lexa murmurs in the dark of their room, tangled in their bed that had been half-empty for one reason or another for far too long. “You were… not the plan.”

“I rarely am.” Clarke chuckled, but propped herself up on her elbow to look at Lexa dead-on. “I love you, you know.”

“I do know.” Lexa said, turning and wrapping her arm around Clarke’s warm waist and burying her nose in her neck. “You give it away when you look at me. It's party why I never suspected you; you wear your emotions on your face like an open book.”

“Hey, I’m great at my job!” Clarke said, pinching Lexa’s bare shoulder. “And you could just say ‘I love you, too’ like a normal person.”

“I love you too.” Lexa said, her eyes drifting shut. “Until then, we should sleep- I’ve been up for about 48 hours-“

Clarke’s phone rings instead.

“It’s Bellamy.” Clarke said, her voice losing it’s sleepy quality and honing to that razor’s edge Lexa had become so familiar with these past few days. “Fuck.”

“ _Clarke?_ ” Bellamy’s voice echoes thin and tinny through the speakerphone. The reason that Lexa has never met Clarke’s best friend in person is now suddenly much more obvious. “ _You have a problem_.”

Lexa slips out of Clarke’s arms and starts getting dressed while Clarke talks. She has a feeling they won’t have the time to dally on a second honeymoon.

“ _The Coalition, the ARK- they know, about you and Lexa. You were set up._ ” He cleared his throat awkwardly. “ _They wanted you to take each other out. Is she, uh-_ “

“I am alive and well, thank you.” Lexa said, rolling her eyes.

“ _That’s good, I guess_.” Bellamy said. “ _I called you as soon as I found out; they’ve got boots on the ground coming for you guys. If you split up, you might have a chance-_ “

“Not an option.” Clarke said, glaring at Lexa as if daring her to argue.

“ _Clarke-!_ ”

“Bye, Bellamy.” Clarke hung up.

“We’re not splitting up.” She said again.

“I did not suggest it.” Lexa said.

If she has to die, she wants to die with Clarke. She couldn’t offer that same consolation with Costia, who’d died alone and afraid because Lexa was too weak to go against her employer. Of all Lexa’s faults, one could not say she did not learn from her mistakes. “The world is a big place.”

Clarke swung her legs over the side of their bed, padding to Lexa’s side to press a kiss against the corner of her mouth. Lexa can feel Clarke’s wedding ring pressed flush against her hip.

Clarke smiles. “Let’s go get lost in it.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> bonus mini-chapter

“I wasn’t in the Peace Corps.” Lexa said, shouting a little to be heard over the wind roaring through the broken windows of their van.

“What- no!” Clarke said, sounding legitimately upset. “Really?”

“Unless you count a stint in special forces in Kuwait, no.” Lexa admitted. She swallowed the lump in her throat, eyeing the slump in Clarke’s shoulders. “But perhaps this was not the best idea-”

“No, no.” Clarke shouted back, swerving through traffic and periodically checking the mirrors for anymore black SUVs. “This is good, we need this.”

“Then what about you?” Lexa asked, climbing into the front passenger seat as Clarke pulled off of the freeway.

“I never finished my residency.” Clarke said quietly. “I- there was a shooting, at the hospital I was working at. My friend Wells bled out under my hands and then I..” Clarke cleared her throat. “Well. Let’s just say ARK found me because of how well I cleaned house.”

“Does the killing bother you?” Lexa asked. She was unsure if she wanted an answer. She touched the skin on the inside of her wrist, feeling the slightly raised inked lines, a tally for each kill. There were 48 of them.

“It used to.” Clarke admitted. “But it was part of survival, at first. And then it was about keeping my team alive. And then…” Clarke sighed, pulling into the shadows of a rundown apartment complex. “I think I stopped feeling it, after a while.”

“No matter how many-”

“122.” Clarke said. Her voice sounded old. 

Despite her promise, Lexa stiffened slightly. “That is a lot.” she said quietly.

“Yeah.” Clarke said, avoiding Lexa’s eyes. The car idled, and Clarke didn’t make a move to turn the key. “Are you sure you want to stick together?”

Lexa leaned over the dash to press a kiss to the corner of Clarke’s mouth. “Your fight is my fight. And it’s not over yet.”

When Clarke turned away to open the door and start unloading the van, Lexa caught the edge of a smile on her lips.


End file.
